Keep in mind the bowling ball structure, seek one or two industry segments that promise high returns and rapid adoption. This is the nose under the tent balanced with a segment that can influence.

Many make the mistake of choosing “lead pins” that are not so willing to promote you and the gains you have delivered to them. If your solution is not publicly visible, then your customer may want to keep their competitive edge to themselves as long as possible This does not help you create the constructive collisions that allow you to extend the efforts of that first application to others.

Leads that turn quickly create revenue and revenue is what it is all about. But if you have two leads in different segments the company needs to choice which has more opportunity at creating kinetic energy. When you are starving for revenue everything looks like a great game changing opportunity. This is where mission and documented, universally understood goals are important.

Some day you will have staff and cycles enough to chase every blue sky opportunity that your lead generation churns from the market, but Not until you have the flywheel running on its own energy not that of the first investors.

All marketing is roadmap driven if it is to be effective, this is why I still believe in Product managers and founders investing in “Fuzzy Front end“ work. I often hear that this is a waste of time and energy or that one can not plan what will happen so do not waste the time. If you drive down the street and have no idea of where you are going and suddenly turn left have you made a change or a choice.

Change happens when you knowingly move from path A to path B based on information. A recent state-up I helped Pivot was on a chosen path to B2C distribution when a new study came back and showed that the market was not going to pay for the service directly they wanted to have it supported by a larger trusted entity. On the other side a few years ago there was a start-up that was convinced that the B2B path was their future even after being refused by almost every major player at the executive level.

The market is the king, your ideas and concepts are suggestions. The market is right and always will be. Pivot and be willing to listen to the markets. The company that moved to a B2B approach had a few Consumers open to trying but that was not sustainable nor had it the promise of generating sufficient revenues. It was tempting to use funding to “just sell more” vs. change.  Changing was the right choice in the end.

Ok so, I buy that they will most likely fail but that is a statistically safe statement but does nothing to talk about cause and effect. Most great ideas come from being in the stream of business. One has an idea and moves to solve that problem, great as long as it does not directly conflict with your employer.

At some point I agree that you need to commit to your idea and that comes in leaps. Your first commitment is to begin working on a solution, then to show it to someone, then to commit to building around it, asking for help, sharing your vision and finally the first pivot.

One of my favorite quotes from Rockefeller comes to play in this, “There are two times when a man starts a business, when he has nothing to lose and when he has much and does not mind loosing some.”

Both come into play for every company, the start-up is always loosing assets while building value, we call this burn rate. (BTW if you are in a “Start-up” with no burn rate you are not building anything) Energy in is consumed to reshape it and obey the laws of physics changing it to something else. We are not talking about burning your time in a coffee shop. That is just waste. You must actively pursue and create. This is risky.

The second part is also always there which is providing the resources to burn. That is an investor, VC, PE or your savings, at some point all of the above.

Each step in building a product and subsequently a company asks for courage and focus  at a greater level from everyone involved. Focus morphs into commitment when you have customers. Very few customers are ever a one-time event. So now that someone has paid you their assets for your services they have placed confidence in you, respect that and deliver your best efforts at honoring them.

Now back to the start and that “Project on the side” yes the longer you do not have the courage to leap with both feet into the project the lower your chance of success. The inverse is not always true nor does early leaping raise chance of success. This is why investors higher experienced teams.

One learns the art of action through failure. When is a tire just slipping and needs a little help from the other wheels to find traction again and when are you stuck in the mud? Humans are learning machines, this is what we cannot translate to other machines. We work by learning and by action. Some are more ritual than others and that has it’s place, but unlike my cat who does the exact same thing every day, humans require diversity or they will turn disruptive and tear down the machine.

Everyone has their own level of comfort with routine and discomfort with disruption, a great team has a broad spectrum here and knows their own and others place.

Causal conversations internally often are not completely casual as we drive ideas and work cross functionally. We are always learning about activity of influencers and execution of workflow. Yes there is a level of constant interviewing in most of our internal conversations.

When we have serious conversations we often expect the others to be understanding the level we are engaged at it is important to set that premise. This is a concept, this represents the direction chosen, speak now or forever hold your piece! “What if” and “How do we” are phrases I use often when talking about concept, then switching “to the plan is” or “this will be” when moving to agreed and active elements.

So there is the rub, the power of words and specificity in our culture is softening that many do not pick up on those contextual definers. How much do we have to define the moment in non-descript terms? Personally I love the power that words have and choose them in almost all situations often to the displeasure of my wife. When you use words with intent I believe it shows, often getting noticed. Those who fish with words only and have agendas that are not open don’t get that.

The downside is often when conversation slide to the soft or BS level Product folks will disengage. Again an extreme that does not serve. Set the premise of conversations, mail and documents You may find it a powerful habit!

Public words seem very Orwellian these days with attempts to change words. This to me is expensive and just wrong. How much does it cost to turn your name into a verb? The answer is you don’t! Like a tornado in Geoffrey Moore’s books it just happens and the best you can do is, be aware and ride it. Don’t work to change, work the change it is much more productive.

The classic case here is always Google being a verb. What did they do to support it? Simply put they kept it simple and still to this day you land on their page and they do one thing. You always start from a search and they collect on that promise every time you pass GO! Reinforcing that one thing they do. This never worked for Yahoo because they wanted to be a portal with a large offering. I just ask who is the portal to the internet Yahoo or Google. Simple works and always will.

en·ter·prise (From Dictionary.com)

1. a project undertaken or to be undertaken, especially one that is important or difficult or that requires boldness or energy:

2. boldness or readiness in undertaking; adventurous spirit; ingenuity.

3. a company organized for commercial purposes; business firm.

Read the words that make up the definition and ask if you and your team are there? Values I seek to build in a team, in my company and most importantly to pull from myself. This is not PC fluff but hard core well understood terms for all

So guess what people start to do within that organization? Yes, dismiss each other! My friend helped me with a difficult board situation once, applying frank and defined roles to the executive and myself helped me turn the company around rapidly. Later I chose to try this with a 6 man start-up and the CTO and a board member had a bad marriage/addictive relationship. Knew in a few weeks that without significant change this was soon to be a flush down the tube scenario. Being a positive person there was one thing I could do to save investors value and toughed it out for a few months to achieve that goal.

We work across groups of people, Sales, Marketing, Customer Service, Operations and yes engineering. Some fields take more education some more practice. Some functions take social skills others best be left alone to perform. No one is an island, while it may not take a village we are connected as a peninsula at best.

The best way to honor anyone is to listen to them, be honestly curious about what they do and the challenges they have. When you keep things close to your chest and do not share some think it is being smart, honestly that is the furthest from the truth. Those who don’t share openly do not respect others and the goal, much of the time it comes from insecurity in themselves.

Trust is one of those things that one needs to show to get. Trust others to fulfill their commitments and they will trust you with yours. Take time to be clear and understand, have the courage to be wrong and feedback to them what you heard. No product gets to market without all the parts needed or it fails. Lead through influence by inspiring through your behavior.

Freedom is to pursue ideas, no one is driving or controlling

Means in this is about capital to build test fail and build again

This is not a political rant but a case study on what I see in companies across the world. Someone has vested themselves in the success of a product or business unit and begun shifting the baseline to buy time for it to work while the unit underperforms the models and expectations.

Like economics the refrain is we just need to message better of our next release will nail it. Or a new ad campaign. The leader is the one who has the courage to stand on the model and call a failing a failing. I recently got a message from a CEO for a permeate role and am considering it because his self-description was one of having the courage to fail honestly. How many of us do?

Shifting the baseline to make the picture better is a common trap that starts with a little white lie, then two then, more! FI you seek the gems that help you evolve then you will find them in an honest review of data that starts at a baseline and stays there. Altering the baseline to look better is a path to having no true picture of where you are at; it may blind others to your short comings but more so blinds you from the opportunities for a pivot!

• Bad assumptions are always the base of any failure, (GIGO) garbage in, garbage out! Experience if the solution, don’t trust sales figures that promise the sun, moon and stars! Also don’t plan to get above 30% of the market. Lastly plan to have competition lower your margins. Yes innovation can support those but don’t plan on it.
• Knowledge is the art of knowing that more of anything is not good. (Can we teach the president this!) There are times for certain concepts and times not to follow these things. Keynes stimulus ideas where intended to be targeted and at the top of the curve before a fall off. At the bottom is takes block and tackle hard work. this is true for any start-up. Invest in expansion and on the way up. At the bottom eat PB&Js and work hard to start a flywheel before you feed it.
• Flexibility – Understand many schools of thought and move between them. A long tail model aver  five years of customer life on the net is not a winner. Having customer loyalty for three years is a home run not five and you best plan for 12-18 months. Also marketing will evolve from acquisition efforts and costs to maintenance and acquisition, you need to care for your customers because rare is the one that leaves and comes back. .

Under commit and over deliver always. Also I play the lottery but do not plan on winning!

Beyond the obvious issues here there is also a much bigger one in that the Design part of the innovation process is much more fluid and full of open requirements. My Favorite is testing; I could define a test that would prove the sky is not blue.

Survey wording and sample selection are key to any result. Chose a more word conscious sample and use absolutes, bingo the sky is not blue as it changes and the perception through human eyes is a band of light technically closer to what we call purple.

Design is the place that solutions fail. The graveyard of ideas is rightfully full, the question is, Are we sending ideas to the round file based on data that is sound? Failing fast is easy to do, much harder is identifying the successful concepts fast!

In the production world we do root cause analysis when the ball comes of the line square. But when ideas flop it is rare to see a company  do that honest review of their funnel or testing. The times I have heard marketing or sales blamed but they were not in the “Concept hardening” process. Teams are frightened to release ideas to sales or the market. Sales always sells futures not what is in the bag, Yea, they can call their base with new stuff. Those phones get answered with a friendly voice. Cold calls can hurt!

Honest testing and idea evaluation is painful for all but every simple action pays off. The ROI of upfront work and thinking ahead at the concept level saves time and cash more than any other event in the New Product Development Process!

Think through the user experience, write the stories and have others read them that are not invested in the outcome.

Ok now describe why you are there rather than the other places. What is the difference between each box and your current state? If you are in the upper right, why? What did you do to get there and is it working for you.

This is a serious exercise and I hope you understand that “there” is a temporary place that if you are ambitious will move just beyond your grasp every day. If you are settled and there, up your skills, dream bigger as others are all around you.